


The Burning Man

by icarus_chained



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Complex, Alien Planet, Compulsion, Exorcisms, Fire, Freedom, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Ghosts, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Horror, Mission Fic, Peace, Possession, Team as Family, Telepathic Bond, firestorm - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 05:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Waverider is forced out of the timestream onto a dead alien world, and an abandoned complex full of long dead horrors. Martin and Jefferson, Firestorm, are compelled to bring a fiery justice to the place. The word <i>compelled</i> is used advisedly. There are ghosts inside these walls. And when they are gone, a kind of peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burning Man

**Author's Note:**

> A very odd bit of a Firestorm horror story that came upon me somewhat randomly.

It's easy to forget sometimes that Firestorm burns.

Well, no. He doesn't mean that quite the way it sounds. It's not the fire they forget. White eyes and flaming hands, it's not the fire itself that doesn't register. They know Firestorm burns. They remember that. It's how the fire _destroys_ that they forget. It's the blistering, burning potential of it, the inferno waiting to happen, that nobody remembers. The Burning Man, who almost destroyed a city once, a million souls, without ever even wanting to. 

Martin knows it's easy to forget. Maybe he even tries to make it so. They're made for more than that, Jefferson and he. Ronald too, back then. He believes that. He has to. They are more than a weapon, more than a walking pillar of destruction. They are a person, a being. A hero. They've saved cities and timelines, they've stood in the face of conquerors, they've pulled people from beneath the feet of leviathans. They have sacrificed themselves to seal holes in the sky. They're destined for good, not for destruction. No matter what the likes of Savage or Vostok or Eiling believe, Martin will, _must_ , always believe that. 

He doesn't want people to look at him, at them, and see the Burning Man. He remembers that too well. The kinds of people it drew, the two kinds of expression they wore. Avarice, in those who wished to use him, who wanted his destruction for their own. And horror, terror, in those who did not. He remembers Clarissa's fear, Caitlin's horror. He remembers Quentin Quale. His friend, a man he had almost murdered, a man he had nearly burned alive in a blazing loss of control. He remembers those few seconds of absolute terror as the man realised what he faced, and Martin realised that he was too far gone to prevent it. He, at least, will never forget them. They're etched into his memory.

He doesn't want that. Never again, and not for Jefferson either. Ronald he hadn't exactly been able to spare, but Jefferson is different. They're not starting from that point. They don't have to be that thing, not again, not ever. The Burning Man is far behind them. Jefferson was never part of it. It's something he thought, hoped, that they would never have to remind anyone of. 

But there are ... there are things out here, in this universe, that are dark and terrible enough to deserve that part of what Firestorm can be. He hadn't thought so, hadn't thought that anything could, but there _are_ ... there are such things. Such places, such horrors, echoing up through time and through space. Things so terrible that even the Nuclear Man, even the Burning Man, can only be a lesser horror in the face of them. 

He looks around them. It's an empty shell of a place, this facility. A museum of lost horrors, all life long since fled from it. There are only ghosts remaining. So many ghosts. He can feel them here, sense them in the walls. It's not superstition, not mysticism. Even the most rational of men would sense them in this place. These ... cells, these machines, this mechanised line of torment. There are marks on the walls. There are bodies, calcified skeletons here or there. Alien rather than human, but that can hardly matter. Their torment is so very clear. Some of them are curled. Some of them are crawling. Some of them are splayed, mute evidence of the grisly manners of their deaths. Abandoned like that. Left to rot inside the mechanised shell of their torture chambers. It is ... there are no words for what he can feel inside this place. The horror, the mute, shaking anger, a wall of it inside him that has no shape and has no meaning. It's just there, this horror. It's just howling emptily inside his head.

He feels Jefferson move to him. Senses it, rather than sees it. There is a shock and a horror inside his partner as well, a blank disbelief at the silent scale of suffering here. There is an anger, too, burgeoning beneath it. A rejection, plain and simple, of all that has so clearly taken place inside these walls. This place, whatever it is, whatever it _was_ , cannot be borne. He feels that inside them both, feels the thick, burning weight of it curl through them as Jefferson finds his hand and curls his own mutely inside of it. They have no need for words. Not in this. Not in the face of _this place_.

It hadn't even been meant for them. They hadn't come here on purpose. An accident, a twist of fate and conflict that knocked the Waverider through time and space, and flung them out here. Into this silent space, this long dead piece of a world where no one would look for them. An alien world. He would have found that so fascinating once. Would again, perhaps, on any world but this one. There's no room for anything but the anger, here. There's no room for anything but the knowledge of what has to be done.

"We can't leave them here."

His voice is soft, crushed. Almost too quiet to be heard. It echoes anyway. The team, one and all lost in their own grim reactions, each flinch from it. They turn to him. He can feel them, feel the protests building on wearier and more rational tongues.

"... There are dozens of bodies here, Martin," Rip says quietly, with a flinching anguish of his own. "There may be hundreds. We can't carry them all out. It would take ..."

Days, he doesn't say. Hours at the very least, and what horrifying hours they would be. Grisly, fearsome, soul crushing hours. They don't even know who these people are. They don't know what they would want, what kind of death or burial or leavetaking would be fitting for them. It's a useless gesture, he does know that. Will it bring them any more comfort to be piled by strangers inside a mass grave? But he cannot ... he _cannot_ leave them here. Not still strung up inside their machines. Not dropped like bags of rubbish, scattered bits of bone flung about like the abandoned playthings of monstrous children. To lie forever entombed where their torturers had left them, surely whatever fate they would have wanted, _that_ would not be it.

He wants to burn it. All of it, this entire place, every rock and stone and rusting monstrosity inside of it. He wants it to burn as only Firestorm could make it burn, from the atoms on upwards, an inferno, a _holocaust_ to match the one that had so clearly already taken place inside of it. He wants that so badly, feels it burn inside his skin, feels it coiling ready and blistering where his palm is joined to Jefferson's. He can't. He knows that he can't. He wants it anyway. It's only the thought that it might be worse for them, these ghosts that linger here, that stops him. It's only the fear that fire is not their chosen custom, that it would disrespect those who had already been disrespected enough.

That's why he needs to bring them outside. To gather them up, these bits of bone that remain, the ghosts that linger inside them, and take them out of this place. Lay them outside, in the air and the open space, some horribly belated echo of freedom, and let them watch as their prison burns into nothingness behind them. It is ... it is so pointless a gesture. A justice far too long delayed, with no one left to witness it. But he _needs_ it. He needs it desperately.

He can feel them here. He's never felt anything so strongly. He can feel the ghosts, feel the imprisonment, feel the despair. It can't be borne. It simply cannot.

"... Can Gideon find 'em for us?" Jefferson asks eventually. He can feel it too, of course. He can feel Martin as well, the sheer force of how much this matters to him. He squeezes Martin's hand, and looks to Rip with desperate, pleading determination. "Can she, I don't know, track biomatter or something? Find 'em for us so we know how many, so we can get them out? Even just me and Grey can do it. We can't leave this, Rip. Look at this place, man. Look at these people. We can't just leave them like this."

And he thinks ... in that moment, Martin thinks that maybe the rest of them can feel it too. All of them, the whole team. He sees the grimness in their faces, the shadows in their eyes as they look around them. Horror in Ray, a spark of something viciously angry in Sara. Pained determination in Rip, grim agreement in Tyler. Even in Rory there is disgust, a cold sneer for what has gone on here. This place is too much for them. This empty, abandoned horror is too much for any of them to willingly let go.

It does take hours, in the end. A long evening, a long night as this world measures such things. There are dozens. Maybe there were more, once, but only so many bodies have survived. Only so many bones. They are grimly grateful for that. It is a filthy, pitiful, terrible job. They bring them out to lay them along what Gideon says will be the sunward side of the enclosure come dawn. They lay the bones outside the boundary, on the edges of the empty desert beyond. Outside of this place. It's necessary, that part. It's the single most essential thing.

They should have worn him down, those hours. They should have hollowed him and wearied him and sapped the strength out of his anger. They should have. They don't. It burns only hotter the farther they go, tangled with a wrenching, tearing empathy at each new alien form they pull from each new prison, writhing and seething and building in his gut. All the fire in the world, feeding on all the pain. There's something else, too. Something else he can feel. An ... almost an anticipation, a ramping, building frenzy of it. It feels odd, not his own, but it doesn't come from Jefferson either. He knows Jefferson, knows the boy inside and out, he knows this feeling doesn't belong to him. He doesn't know where it comes from. Something inside him, maybe, something he hadn't known existed. He has to hope it's not too terrible a thing.

And then, finally, the job is done. Close on dawn, a good time. The perfect time. They bring the last of the bodies out into the grey air of an alien pre-dawn, lay the few bones gently beside their fellows. The crew gathers off to one side. Grim, tired, uncertain. Wondering what needs to be done next. They're none of them up for digging a grave. But that's not what needs doing. Martin knows that. They don't need to worry. That's not what happens next.

He holds out his hand for Jefferson. Making it a question, making sure his partner knows this is a choice. The Burning Man is a terrible thing. It's nothing Jefferson should have to be part of, if it is more than he can bear. Something roars its anger inside him at the idea, furious that he might deny it, but Martin bears that down without a thought. Shuts it off, pushes it away. He will not force Jefferson to this. Never in life.

He doesn't have to, anyway. There is anger in Jefferson too. There is a grief and a pain and an empathy, and there is a fire that feeds from it. It isn't their usual anger. It isn't the rapid, chaotic tumbling of it. This is a calmer, steadier, fiercer thing. It would be cold, if it didn't burn as brightly as it did. Jefferson reaches out to take Martin's hand in his. Willingly, fearsomely. He reaches out and opens up and swallows all of Martin's fire inside of him. 

It's a strange merge. They feel fuller somehow. Heavier, as though they carry all the ghosts of this terrible place inside of them. Martin feels Jefferson flinch, stagger. He pours out his strength until his partner can find their feet. They are steady when they turn to face the rest of the crew. They are calm and brightly burning when they turn to find five faces staring at them in sudden, almost fearful understanding.

"Go back to the Waverider," Jefferson tells them quietly, with an intonation to his voice almost exactly like Martin's for a moment. "We're gonna be making things real hot here in a minute. You're gonna need to be farther away."

They hesitate. Of course they do. They don't want to leave Firestorm alone. Not with this. Both Martin and Jefferson can see it in them, can see how Rip and Ray and Sara all instinctively lean towards them instead of away. It's not a reaction the Burning Man has ever drawn before, though Firestorm has become somewhat more accustomed to it. Mick is a more complicated matter. There's something in him when he looks at them, something when he looks at the complex they are about to burn as thoroughly as anything may be burned. There is something of an avarice in it, if a faintly fearful one. It's not terrible, though. It's not as cold and remote as others had been. He knows who they are, still. He won't forget, even when the flames are at their most beautiful.

It's Tyler who moves them away at last. He's new, his bonds with them only fragile yet. He's inclined to take them at their word, and not fuss too much trying to talk them out of it. He's sensible too. Enough to gradually guide the others along with him. Rip realises quickly enough as well. He knows better than to get in their way in this. Mick is the last to move. It takes Ray and Sara both to pull him finally away.

And then ... then there is only them. Only Martin and Jefferson, only the Burning Man, and only the bones. The ghosts, lined up in the growing dawn to watch their prison burn.

They are ... very calm about it, in the end. So it feels, anyway. Jefferson's anger is usually hotter and more volatile than this. Martin's too, if he's honest. But there's no room for that here. This isn't blind rage, isn't fire spewing randomly all around them. This is a holocaust, an inferno, this is fire built from the atoms up. This place deserves no better fate. They are _calm_ about it. They are fierce and inexorable and scientific. Their power burns inside their hands. Not just the fire. They change things too. Transmutation. They build fire and air and flammables, seed it through stone and metal, build the fire from the very base of all around them. They stand in the centre of it, feed it from the blind howling of their distant anger, and in the midst of it they do not burn. Or no. They burn, and are not destroyed.

It's not Firestorm, this. Not entirely. Firestorm is a hero, a preserving thing. People forget that Firestorm can burn, because Firestorm doesn't want to. Until ... until he does. Until he remembers something else. This, here, in this place, this is the Burning Man. A holocaust waiting to happen. A man who had once almost wiped a city from the earth, without ever meaning to.

It isn't terrible, though. Even here, even now, this is not the worst of what they might be. Martin clings to that, even as buildings buckle around them and metal burns white with transmuted phosphorous. He holds to it brightly and fiercely in the midst of their conflagration, and feels Jefferson shining only light and hope and confidence his way. They are not evil, doing this. They don't do it for any terrible reason. It's only justice they seek. It's only freedom for desperate shades. It isn't wrong. 

It isn't wrong. He feels that, wouldn't have done it if he didn't. He feels more than that, too, feels something ... something building around them. Feels something ... watching and feeling and feeding from their fire. The brighter it burns, the fiercer this thing builds inside of them. No. No, not inside. _Around_ them. It's not inside them. It never was. Martin realises that only too late. He realises it with a surge and splash of horror, feels Jefferson realise it too. There is a reason this place was abandoned. There is a reason the bodies were left still trapped inside their machines. He feels them turn in the midst of their inferno, himself and Jefferson, and look back towards the dawnward boundary. Towards the bones. Towards the _ghosts_.

There is a line of them along the boundary, faint inside the pink light of a fiery dawn. Strange, grey shapes, dispersed and translucent enough that they might be only mist, but they aren't. They aren't. They both know that. These things that watch them are not mist. That anger inside them had not been theirs. Or not wholly, at least. Not theirs alone. 

There had been ghosts inside the walls. He had felt it, they had felt it. All of them, maybe, but Martin and Jefferson most of all. Because of their bond, perhaps, because they are accustomed to sensing things outside of themselves. Or just because these beings had wanted them. Them, specifically. Because they had sensed the fire inside them, the Burning Man, and they had _wanted_ him. They are not afraid of fire, these ghosts. They're not disrespected by it. They had wanted nothing in this world more fiercely and more desperately than the burning of this prison, this tomb, in which they had been left to wallow in their anguish and despair.

It's a strange, terrible realisation, that. Hollowing, humbling. It guts the fire inside of them, hollows it and turns it cold, gutters it out inside their chest. That doesn't matter so much. The complex is already burned around them. It will burn for days, now, blasted clean and sullen in its gravebed. It's already collapsed down to nothing but fiercely burning embers. Their job is done. Their fire has served its purpose. It feels strange to know that. Hollow and shaking, the realisation shuddering through them.

They move to leave it behind them, then. Instinctively, automatically, in a sort of shock. On foot. Walking, not flying. The fire and embers stir around their feet, still white-hot, still smouldering. It doesn't hurt them. It can't. The ghosts are waiting for them as they clear the line of it. Grey and indistinct, hovering above their bones. They reach towards them. It isn't terrible. It should be. It should be terrifying. But the ghosts aren't angry now. They aren't locked in an endless horror. There is a ... a peace to them, in that moment as Firestorm brushes through them. There is a calm and a clear, quiet gratitude. Martin feels Jefferson want to weep, wants it somewhat himself. If their tears wouldn't promptly evaporate, perhaps they might have let themselves. The ghosts vanish as they pass them. They fade away behind them as they walk out of the last of the fire.

The team are waiting for them at the Waverider. In front of it, outside of it. Unshielded. There's no horror on their faces. Martin had ... He hadn't _expected_ there to be, as such, but perhaps a part of him had feared it. He'd never wanted to remind them of the Burning Man. He'd never wanted to remind anyone of just how terribly Firestorm could burn. They're not afraid, though. These people, this team. They're terrible enough themselves, perhaps, when pushed to it. They've enough of a darkness themselves. 

Or perhaps ... perhaps they only know him well enough. Himself and Jefferson. Perhaps they just know how very little they have ever wanted to cause harm.

It's sympathy on their faces when Firestorm reaches them. Pain and sympathy and an edge of satisfaction, shock and grey-faced realisation for the line of ghosts, something of a wild-eyed need to see them safe. Rip darts forwards and hovers instinctively. Ray only barely stops himself from reaching out. Sara hovers on the edges, almost behind them, her staff in her hands just in case. And Mick ... well. That's something else. He has a complicated relationship with fire, their arsonist. What they've done, what they have just become, they can't read yet what it might have done to him. He doesn't flinch from them, though. He nods to them gruffly, and moves to shield them as readily as Sara. They ... close ranks around them. The team. All of them, even Tyler. They flow forwards and close ranks around the man burning in their midst.

It's peace Martin feels from Jefferson, as they take that opportunity, safe and surrounded, to filter out into their separate forms. It's peace he feels from his partner, exhaustion and satisfaction, and the calm happiness that comes from being protected. The boy reaches out to him as he staggers onto his own two feet, wraps an arm around him as they fall out into their own, unburning bodies. Jefferson pulls him close, solid and warm, and leans in to press his forehead gently to Martin's.

"It's okay, Grey," he whispers quietly, holding them up as they shudder together in the aftermath of what they've seen and what they've done. "It's okay. We did good. It's gonna be okay."

And Martin believes him. He must, and he does. He believes it well and truly.

They are Firestorm. And they are meant for good.


End file.
